In my view, taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to subsidize criminal behavior. Would you agree with me on that? Yet that is what’s happening.
Maybe you’ve heard how law officers get to keep some of the money they grab from drug-trafficking suspects. No evidence or trial is required. Empowered by anti-racketeering and other laws, they can just snag the goods at will.
But that’s not all. Social workers now have a financial incentive to kidnap children. That’s what a Massachusetts couple, Heidi and Neil Howard, found out when their first baby girl was born terminally ill. A social worker pushed her way into their home and found it in disorder. The kitchen was being remodeled, and there was a lot of tension in the air, possibly the kind of tension associated with having a terminally ill baby. Social workers told Heidi that if she didn’t sign a complaint against her husband, she could lose her two sons. Then they used that signed complaint to take her two sons.
More and more, agencies are conniving to break up families. Feminist writer Wendy McElroy says the Adoption and Safe Families Act, passed by Congress in 1997, deserves a lot of the blame. The Act awards a “finder’s fee” of up to $4,000 to agencies that adopt out a child. Of course, to adopt out a child, you first need to have a child in tow, ready to go.
Taxpayer-funded payoffs alone won’t turn cops into robbers or child protection specialists into kidnappers. There has to be a certain lack of moral scruples also. But you know, the payoffs don’t exactly help, either.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.